Elephant Song

There was a powerful radio in the UDC administrative building beside the landing-pad, but they would probably not be able to reach that immediately.  As a back-up Daniel had a portable VHF transmitter, with which they could contact the headquarters at Gondola.  Kelly was the radio operator who would transmit the signal that the rising had begun.

Daniel had drawn up four fall-backs and alternative plans to deal with every foreseeable contingency, but everything hinged on getting Taffari with the first shot.  If Daniel failed there, he could expect Taffari to react with the speed and fury of a wounded lion.  He would rally his men, it didn't bear thinking about.  Daniel put the possibility out of his mind.  He had to get Taffari.

The Puma was only fifty feet above the concrete landing-pad, sinking towards it slowly.

Daniel laid his cheek against the burtstock of his rifle and stared into the brilliant field of the telescopic sight.  It was set to nine magnifications.  He could see the expressions on the faces of the little reception committee at the landing-pad.

He lifted his aim, and captured the image of the helicopter.

The lens was too high-powered to show him more than the hatchway in the Puma's fuselage.  The flight engineer stood in the opening, directing the aircraft's descent.  Daniel focused his attention on him, keeping the crossbar of the telescope on his chest, using the buckle of his safety strap as an aiming point.

Suddenly another head appeared over the engineer's shoulder.

Beneath the maroon beret with its glittering brass cap-badge were Ephrem Taffari's noble aquiline features.  He's come, Daniel exulted.

It's him.

He lifted the cross-hairs of the sight and tried to hold between Taffari's dark eyes.  The movement of the helicopter, his own heart beat and hand shake, the inherent inaccuracy of the rifle all made it an impossible shot, but he concentrated all his mind and his will on Taffari.  He purged himself of any last vestige of conscience and of mercy.  Once again he forced upon himself the cold hard determination of the assassin.

At that moment the first raindrop struck the back of his neck.  It startled him, his aim trembled, then another raindrop splashed against the lens of the Zeiss scope, and a soft wavering line of rain water ran down across the glass and dimmed the brilliance of the telescopic image.

Then it started to rain in real earnest, that sudden tropical deluge that seemed to turn the air to mist and blue water.  It was like standing beneath a torrent in a mountain stream.

Daniel's vision dissolved.  The crisply detailed human shapes he had been watching an instant before became dim blurs of movement.  The men waiting on the landing-pad raised coloured umbrellas, and swarmed forward to meet the president, to offer him protection from the roaring rain.

There was misty movement and confusion.  The colours; of the umbrellas ran and starred and confused his eye.  He saw a distorted image of Ephrem Taffari vault down lightly from the hatchway.

Daniel had expected him to pose theatrically above the heads of the crowd and perhaps make a brief speech, but he vanished instantly.

Though Daniel tried desperately to keep the cross-hairs on him, somebody raised a wet umbrella and held it over him.

Ning Cheng Gong's misty figure appeared in the hatchway, distracting Daniel's concentration.  He swung the sight, back towards Cheng, and then stopped himself.  It had to be Taffari first.  Desperately he swung the telescope back and forth, questing for a view of his target.

The welcoming delegation had crowded around Taffari, umbrellas raised, obscuring him completely.

The rain struck the concrete pad with such force that each drop exploded in a burst of spray.

Rain was splattering against the lens of the telescopic sight and streaming down Daniel's face beneath the mask.

Hita paratroopers were jumping down from the helicopter and clustering around their president.  No sign of Taffari now, and everybody was ru

Taffari appeared again, stepping out fast in the slanting rain, heading for the leading vehicle.  Even at a walking pace and taking into account the velocity of the 7mm bullet, Daniel would have to lead him by two feet or more.  He could barely distinguish him through the clouded lens.

It was an almost impossible shot, but he tightened up on the trigger, just as one of the Hita bodyguards ran forward to assist his master.

The shot went off before Daniel could stop himself.  He saw the Hita paratrooper spin round and go down, shot through the chest.  It would have killed Taffari as cleanly, if the man had not covered him.

The whole pattern of moving men in the rain exploded.

Taffari threw down the umbrella he carried and darted forward.

All around him men were ru

Daniel jacked another round into the chamber of the rifle and fired again, a snap shot at Taffari.  It had no effect, a clean miss.

Taffari kept ru

Daniel glimpsed Ning Cheng Gong in the thick of it, and fired again.

He saw another paratrooper go down on his knees, hit low in the body, and then the other soldiers were blazing away wildly towards the edges of the forest, uncertain from which direction Daniel's shots were coming.

Daniel was still trying desperately to get another shot at Taffari, but the Landrover was pulling away.  He fired at the head he could see behind the windscreen, not certain whether it was Taffari or a driver.

The windscreen shattered, but the vehicle did not check or swerve.

He emptied the magazine at the accelerating vehicle.  Then as he tried to reload from the bandolier at his waist, he saw three or four of the Hita guards and the civilian officials take hits and go down sprawling in the rain.  There was the swelling clatter of small-arms fire.

The men of his own commando had opened fire from their positions in the forest outside the perimeter.

The uprising had begun, but Taffari was still alive.

Daniel saw the Landrover make a wide circle, swinging past the office building and come back round under the hovering helicopter.  The Puma was hanging twenty feet above the ground, almost hidden by the falling curtains of rain.  Taffari was leaning out of the driver's window, signalling frantically for the pilot to pick him up again.

At that moment a man appeared out of the jungle on the far side of the clearing.  Even at that distance Daniel recognized Morgan Tembi, the Matabele instructor.  He carried the tube of an RPG rocket-launcher on his shoulder as he raced forward.

None of the Hita bodyguard seemed to have spotted him.  A hundred paces from the hovering Puma, Morgan dropped on one knee, steadied himself and fired a rocket.

It rode on a tail of white smoke, whooshing in to hit the Puma well forward, almost in line with the Puma pilot's canopy.

The cockpit and the pilot in it were obliterated by the burst of smoke and flame.  The Puma performed a lazy cartwheel in the air and fell to earth on its back.  The spi

Morgan Tembi jumped to his feet and ran back towards the edge of the forest.  He never made it.  The Hita bodyguards shot him down long before he could reach cover, but he had cut off Taffari's escape.